1. Field
The invention disclosed and claimed herein generally pertains to monitoring the position of a person traveling to a destination such as a house or apartment that is his or her home, and making use of the monitored information at the premises. More particularly, the information is used to determine the time at which a specified state, condition or event is caused to occur at the premises.
2. Description of the Related Art
Energy conservation is of increasing interest and concern. At present, energy savings in operations for heating and cooling homes and other buildings may be achieved by using certain sophisticated programmable thermostats. Typically, such devices are set to begin a heating or cooling task at a preselected time before a person anticipates arriving at home, after completing a day of work or other activity. The time is selected to provide sufficient time for the home to reach a temperature that will be comfortable, according to the person's tastes, at the time that he or she arrives home.
A common problem with arrangements of the above type is that they do not take into account any deviations in an initially planned or anticipated schedule. For instance, many different types of events could occur that would cause a person to arrive home much later than the time which was intended, when the person set his or her thermostat. Such events may include, by way of example, a traffic jam, an unexpected meeting, or a last-minute decision to spend the evening out somewhere. Clearly, energy will be used unnecessarily, during such additional time that the user is away from home. It would be very beneficial to eliminate, or to significantly reduce, this unnecessary use of energy.